[throwaway2037]

This is exactly what has happened to commercial and investment banking (market/trading) in the last 30 years. Computers and mass automation. Even if your profits only grow with inflation (in reality, they grow much faster), but you can reduce costs each year (less labour required), then return on equity continues to rise. It is crazy to me that most big commercial banks still have so many physical branches. I guess they exist for regulatory purposes -- probably _very_ hard to close a branch to avoid "banking deserts".

[WWLink]

This has changed considerably. Chase remodeled most of their existing branches so they have like, 1 teller, and 2 or 3 people sitting at desks for other transactions. That's it. The days where your usual branch had a line of like 15 tellers are long gone. Out here in southern california, I think they also closed many of their branches in the past few years.

But looking back further - ohhhhhh yeah dude. Oh yeah. Totally. For a brief period my mom worked at a BofA facility that _processed paper checks_. Like they had a whole big office for it. That's completely 100% gone now. The checks get scanned at the point of entry (cash registers, teller counters, etc) and then shredded.